Thoughts from the Embers: Take our readership survey

Every year, TKS editors make an effort to discuss our goals, plans and projects for The Knox Student. We collaborate and brainstorm with each other, address problems from the past, come up with new ways to organize ourselves and streamline our workflows. Like every other campus organization, the cyclical nature of the student body makes it both easy and difficult to bring in new leadership and new members.

As editors for The Knox Student, we plan on upholding the values and principles that are outlined in our ethics statement. We want to stick to TKS’s legacy of investigative journalism and muckraking and our commitment to accountability and truth-telling.

But we’re also new editors, and it’s a new year. The beginning of the school year is like the debut of a new publication, and every year, we want to make sure it’s better than the last. But in order to do that, we need to listen to you.

Last week, we created and distributed our 2015 Readership Survey, one of many efforts to better engage and communicate with our audience. It’s open to everyone who reads TKS, including students, alumni, faculty and staff, and it will run for the duration of the term.

We hope to use the data to better understand our strengths and weaknesses, as well as focus our attention and talents on content that our community cares about. More importantly, the survey is the first step in opening up better lines of communication and sparking a continuous dialogue with our readers.

We ask that you take a couple minutes out of your day to fill out the survey, and we promise to take seriously your responses and learn from them.

The first couple questions are simple multiple choice questions (how often do you read TKS, how many articles do you typically read in a week, etc.), but the open-ended questions at the end mean the most to us. There, you can be detailed in your critique or suggestions and be sure that someone will be on the other side to take note of them. If you think we’re not reporting on something enough, not accurate in our writing or too biased in our coverage, please tell us. If our content has ever offended you in any way, let us know.

The scope of our coverage is limited to the knowledge and experiences of our editors. We try to keep our ears to the ground to stay on top of issues and stories on campus, but sometimes we fall short. The only way we can report fairly and comprehensively is with the help of our peers.

We can’t learn from our mistakes if we don’t know about them. Please hold us accountable by letting us know if you have experience with our content or staff so we can serve the campus as responsibly as we possibly can.

If you are new to campus and unfamiliar with TKS, we still want to hear from you. What do you want to see from us? What can we do to help you navigate Knox and learn more about our community?

Beyond the Readership Survey, you can also contact us by emailing tks@knox.edu. We welcome and encourage your responses, and we even invite you to send us a letter to the editor if you want your response be published in the paper and online. You can do that by emailing tks@knox.edu or sending a letter to K-Box 240 by 10 p.m. on Sunday night.

As journalists, we want to keep ourselves in check. As students, we’re still learning and growing.